Antoine schreef: >> >> Indeed, life is harder for those of us who don't have English as >> first language. >> >>> kashani, still trying to get his German, Spanish, and Farsi up to >>> speed > > Can you imagine how hard it is to learn another language when > everyone wants to speak English to you?
We used to complain about this *all the time* at Taalschool (the year-long Dutch as A Second Language course that is required by the government as part of the conditions for granting a Permit of Stay). Many of us lived with Dutch people (certainly those of us who were in the country because we were married to one), and of course that means family and neighbors and other contacts who were native Dutch speakers... but we found it universally difficult to get said native speakers to help us by speaking Dutch (preferably slowly), or (heaven forfend) helping us with our homework and the like, because they all wanted to improve or show off their English/Russian/French. Of course it's tiring for everyone, trying to have a conversation and having the subject under discussion interrupted by constant grammatical correction, and it's not really helpful to hold said conversations in the "other" language for purposes of clarity, but often necessary when new to the second language. But it was clear to us that the amount of practice time we were getting from our 'aces in the hole' was far less than could be explained by those excuses. We all found it very frustrating. Of course, now that I have a fair working knowledge of Dutch, my personal Dutchman helps me a lot more. Can't say I don't appreciate it, but I could have used the help more two years ago. I suspect that this expectation of (to my mind, rather excessive) self-reliance is common across Europe, though the Dutch may be a bit stricter about it than other European cutural groups. So once you get over the 'novelty hump', it should get better :-) . Holly -- [email protected] mailing list
